Lisa Sugiura offers a clear and effective account of Incels and how the manosphere is capturing the minds and bodies of a generation of boys and men, reshaping their futures in devastating ways. This book is essential reading for anyone who is interested in finding out about the legal, tech and educational reforms needed to prevent regressive gender ideology, support victims, and rebuild a fairer and more gender equitable society.

— Professor Jessica Ringrose, UCL Institute of Education

Sugiura's book The Incel Crisis provides a timely and much-needed discussion about incels and their connection to both misogyny and anti-feminism. Through an expertly conducted discussion, Sugiura highlights how the ideologies and worldviews of incels, as enacted through language, algorithms, and other cultural practices, contribute to widespread gender-based harms. Sugiura does not shy away from difficult conversations in this book, and, indeed, encourages readers to embrace the difficult nature of analysing both incels and misogyny more broadly. The Incel Crisis manages to connect multiple broader structural issues together in a way which opens up discussion, invites reflection, and encourages readers to find ways to tackle multiple prejudices simultaneously. This accessible book demonstrates why we need to address these gender-based harms and how such problematic views of gender might manifest through technology. Importantly, Sugiura rightly calls on a multifaceted approach to tackling misogyny — one in which we all have a part to play. An excellent, must-read book for anyone interested in gender and technology!

— Dr Frazer Heritage, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Manchester Metropolitan University

This is an important, timely and much-needed book. The Incel Crisis offers a sophistication and depth of detail that helps unpack what inceldom actually is, moving well beyond stereotypes and simplified narratives. Lisa Sugiura refuses the kind of sensationalism that often dominates this topic, instead providing careful, grounded, and nuanced insights. This is a necessary and deeply useful text for anyone trying to properly understand what is happening and why it matters.

— Steve Roberts, Professor of Sociology, Monash University

Lisa has written the book we’ve been waiting for. Rigorous without being inaccessible and unflinching with being alarmist. This book does what the best research always does: it refuses easy answers. Lisa traces how ordinary loneliness gets weaponized into misogyny, how online platforms amplify rather than reflects that process and why the ‘absent father’ narrative tells us nothing useful. Every educator, safeguarding lead and policy maker trying to understand what is actually happening with young men needs to read this book. (And mine).

— Matt Pinkett, Author, Unmasking the Manosphere

In The Incel Crisis, Lisa Sugiura expertly dissects the contemporary challenges of incel culture, mapping how it has become increasingly mainstream, and with it, normalising male dominance, sexual entitlement, and violence against women. But her analysis does not sensationalise. Rather it illustrates how inceldom arises from, and exacerbates, the larger problem of misogyny both online and offline. In a compelling and eminently readable manner, Professor Sugiura calls on all of us, including governments, technology companies, and ordinary citizens, to work collectively if we are to turn back the tide of misogyny for future generations.

— Professor Anastasia Powell, RMIT University, Australia

The Incel Crisis by Lisa Sugiura is a thoughtful, accessible guided tour through the rise of the contemporary misogynist incel movement. Sugiura clearly explains incel ideology, the cultural and technological factors shaping and spreading it, and how it relates to mainstream patriarchal culture. The Incel Crisis provides recommendations for mitigating the harms created by incel culture and interrupting this and other forms of online sexism and misogyny. I recommend this book as essential reading for parents, policymakers, students, and researchers interested in incel ideology, online radicalisation, extremism, and gender-based violence.

— Molly Dragiewicz, Professor, Criminology & Criminal Justice, Griffith University, Australia

In an era marked by debates over social media regulation, misogynistic influencers, and wider discussions about masculinity, The Incel Crisis offers a much-needed intervention. Sugiura moves beyond simplistic portrayals of incels as either victims or villains by examining the social and digital environments that foster alienation, grievance, and harm. She reminds us that these issues cannot be understood – or addressed – through individuals alone, as they reflect the interaction of socio-cultural, technological, and institutional forces that shape both harm and pathways for prevention. Nuanced, accessible, and deeply insightful, this is an important contribution to a defining social issue of our time.

— Dr Angus Lindsay, Principal Policy Advisor (Counter Terrorism), New Zealand Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

This book is a deep exploration of misogynist incels that gets at common misconceptions regarding their identity and ideology. Sugiura orients readers toward misogyny as a collective problem that in turn requires society-wide responses, arguing for pathways to change that are rooted in empathy and accountability. Coming five years after her prior book on the topic, The Incel Rebellion, the new volume provides a comprehensive update of not only new trends in misogynist incel communities, but also developments in approaches to understanding and prevention of male supremacist ideology and harm.

— Alex DiBranco, Executive Director and Founder, Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, theirms.org

This is an impressive book which gives an accessible and well-rounded introduction to the rise of incel cultures based on years of relevant research. The book effectively unpacks the nature of incel culture and challenges us to think about how changes to society, shifts into digital culture, and the longer legacy of normalised misogyny, should all be seen as part of how incel ideology has developed. Whatever the causes, the book reminds us that incels make decisions to take part in misogynistic cultures and takes a critical look at how we should take a whole society approach to tackle incel indoctrination.

— Dr Craig Haslop, Reader in Media Studies

Professor Lisa Sugiura is one of the foremost authorities on the incel community, with nearly a decade in the field. The Incel Crisis is a culmination of that work offering those who need it most a comprehensive guide to understanding who incels are, what they believe, and how me may begin to tackle the rising problems of associated misogyny and gender-based harms.

In one of the most accessible books to date, Sugiura unravels the misconceptions around the incel community, situating their beliefs in a much wider and growing interconnected digital network of men, and reminds us that laced within the misogyny and entitlement of men blaming women for their ills lie experiences of trauma, poor mental health and socially imbued struggles with masculine identity.

The Incel Crisis carefully balances the call for accountability and change with empathy and a supportive and preventative approach that still recognises the humanity in these men. Crucially it also holds institutions and corporations to account which, in our contemporary digital age, must take responsibility for their part in failing to prevent the adversarial and ideologically extreme online environments within which incel beliefs are often first encountered.

For educators, parents, and policymakers looking to understand incels, their ideology, and the pathways to reducing harm both by and within the community this book is the go to guide.

— Dr Stu Lucy, Lecturer in Criminology, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Portsmouth, UK

Incels are everywhere in our news feeds, our courtrooms, and our classrooms. Despite this, they remain widely misunderstood. In The Incel Crisis, Lisa Sugiura cuts through the noise with a decade of original research, including interviews with incels themselves, to deliver a clear-eyed account of who these men are, how they are shaped by the online environments they inhabit, and why the crisis is inseparable from the broader culture of misogyny that surrounds us all. Rigorous without being bogged down by jargon, compassionate without excusing incel's harm, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand, and possibly change, the world young people are growing up in.

— Tristan Bridges, University of California, Santa Barbara, United States, Coauthor of Gender in World Perspective, 5th edition (Polity Press)

Lisa Sugiura is Professor of Cybercrime and Gender at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She is a leading expert in online gender-based violence, and her research is at the intersection of technology, online harms, and violence against women.

Chapter 1. Introduction: The Problem of the Incel Phenomenon
Chapter 2. The Incel Identity: What is an Incel?
Chapter 3. A Platform Problem: Algorithms of Alienation
Chapter 4. “Not Just Lonely”: The Gender Politics behind Inceldom
Chapter 5. “Breaking the Cycle”: Pathways to Empathy, Accountability, and Change